


Thesis of the Tragic Hero

by Sorbus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Paradox, Sacrifice, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorbus/pseuds/Sorbus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The killing curse doesn't simply rebound. Nothing happens for nothing, and Harry Potter must decide what he'd willing to give up for the rest of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thesis of the Tragic Hero

A resonant laugh echoed through the small cottage in Godric’s Hollow and Harry Potter had never been so scared in his life. The loud sort of squeal a child makes in lieu of laugher reached his ears, which only really served to make it seem more surreal. He felt like he was walking in a dream, not quite awake and aware of the real world around him, in all its dreadful glory.

Because right at that very moment, James and Lily Potter were alive, playing with their year old son.  

A year ago, Harry would have never believed he’d have any proper memory of his parents alive. That he would be the graced with firsthand knowledge of the timber of James’ laugh, or the distinct sound his Lily’s voice took on when she was happy. His parents were, and always had been, a collage of stories put together from other people’s experiences. Remus’ stories about his mother and her intelligence, pictures taken and set up by someone else, even Snape’s memories adding to the picture.

But that had always created a bit of a distance between him and his parents. They were more of an idea, a collection of random bits of impressions and the image of two people who looked vaguely like himself. He had no memory of interacting with them; he couldn’t recall any conversations or hell, even some half forgotten lullaby they sang to him at night.

He could vaguely hear some rhyme being recited to the child version of him right then, and it hit him, quite suddenly, that his parents were _real_. His parents were people, were – are – alive, and they had proper lives and dreams and thought and were legitimate, honest to god people, simply going by their day to day, with no knowledge of the future.

It was weird, he guessed, that he never really understood that he came from a couple of humans like everyone else had. A part of him – the little bit that had taken all the Dursley’s vitriol and abuse to heart – was probably still stuck in a sense of disbelief that he hadn’t simply spawned into existence. The larger part of him felt a dawning sense of disbelieving horror that this revelation had to happen when he was there to ruin it all.

“Come on now, it’s time to start packing up,” Lily’s – his mother’s – voice echoed up the stairway. “My little man is going to be all worn out after all of the excitement today.”

With a jolt, Harry was forcefully reminded of why he was here. They had a Halloween party earlier, he’d used the commotion to slip through unnoticed actually (though he was more focused upon being relieved the Fidelus didn’t affect him, coming from the future as he did), but the only important thing about that day wasn’t that it was Halloween. It was Halloween, 1981, the night The Dark Lord Voldemort fell, the night the Boy-Who-Lived was created.

The day his parents died.

A sort of shuffling noise reached his ears, and Harry shifted from under his invisibility cloak. He had already set most things up, having purified the room of excess magic that could interfere, already having cast a light compulsion charm on the stairs on his way by to have the next person decide to run to that very room, unarmed. In a high stressful situation, where fear overtook logic, they wouldn’t be able to catch it.

But time was running out, and he needed to draw the runic circle that would set him life of track. Of course, he had memorised it so well he could draw it in three minutes flat, and the blood did need to be fresh, but he couldn’t simply stand there all night, wishing that he could do something differently. He needed to make sure everything went to plan, and then hide the box that contained all his notes somewhere safe, for it to be found far into the future so that he would be able to do it all over again.

Harry glanced at the wooden box he’d come to be very familiar with in the past few months, and couldn’t decide whether it was an appropriate object for being the bane of his existence. It was beautiful mahogany, with an engraved Celtic design on the lid and sides, the potter crest emblazoned across the front in gold. The last part was his own addition, where before it was a simple golden shield. He had thought it looked nice in the window of some second hand shop as he passed it by, a pretty box that he was simply compelled to buy.

He had been compelled to buy it, because Hermione had put the original, very complex compulsion on it in preparation for what he was going to do that night.

It was a simple conundrum, one that he hadn’t paid much attention to during his lifetime. Nobody knew, or cared, why the killing curse reflected off him. He hadn’t been too hung up on the whole ‘love’ idea, but honestly, the fact that there was a less than sane Dark Lord after his blood was far more an important problem to worry about anyway. But no, nothing in his life could remain simple, or mysterious, or part of some happy coincidence. That never happened to Harry Potter, no.

Instead, he saw a pretty box in a shop window, which he bought right away and took home. Only, he had to obsess over it, because he’d _seen that box before Hermoine,_ he could have sworn by it. And after months of excessive worry, it had come to him. During the hunt for Voldemort’s horcruxes, he’d gotten the stupid idea to visit his house, and in his house he’d seen, in passing, a box just like the one he’d bought.

Of course, like the Griffindor he was, he’d raged over the idea that someone had broken into his parents’ house to steal their things and sell them off. It was Mundungus Fletcher all over again, and Harry wouldn’t stand for it once more. He had rushed to Godric’s Hollow, spitting fire the whole way, only to fall short when he came across an almost exact replica of the bough he had bought from the store. Hermoine, of course had bidden him to open it, and lo behold, it worked exactly the way that the first box did. Only the first box was empty, and didn’t come with letters and notes and parchments after parchment of secrets that would tear his world apart.

Because the killing curse doesn’t simply _rebound_. Nothing ever happens for nothing. No, they needed to make it happen. They needed to make it so Voldemort was vanquished that night, after having killed Lily and James Potter, after having made _Harry_ his horcrux, so that the timeline would remain stable.

There were arguments and denials. The authenticity of everything came under question, and then proven true (as he knew it would, because he designed it with their own denial in mind). Extensive research into time itself was undertaken, whether it in itself was linear, or whether there was a multitude of universes that allowed for branching realities that wouldn’t affect each other. They spent almost a year looking into everything, trying to find even a small hint that could disprove the evidence, and when they could not, theorising over and over about the chances of it working.

It was no mean feat to go back decades into the past, even with Hermoine’s knowledge as an unspeakable. They didn’t know if Voldemort had already prepared himself to implement his soul into another vessel, but they couldn’t bank on the chance that he did. There was no way to stop the killing curse from being used that night, but there had to be a way to make it gain the same effects that led to the future they were living in.

It was, in a way, disgustingly simple. Of course, the answer was already in the box, but it was they had briefly considered. A ritual, a bastardised horcrux ritual for baby Harry to use.

When one wanted to make a horcrux, they needed a living sacrifice, the intent to kill, and the agreement of the victim to be murdered. The last requirement was what made the process so difficult, and stopped every murdering criminal to go running around with their souls in pieces. Luckily, they had all three in the various people present that night. Voldemort was willing to kill and thus split his already fractured soul, and Lily was willing to sacrifice herself. But if the ritual focused upon the Dark Lord, then he would simply have another failsafe for his immortality, and Harry would be killed. Now if Harry was the centre focus, the events would go differently. Magic would assume Lily was reserved for him – as she was, only really willing to be murdered for him, and not for Voldemort. Yet Harry wouldn’t be able to kill, nor produce the willingness to kill, and so his soul would not be split as a result.

Instead, the Dark Lord would kill _Harry’s_ sacrifice, and then throw the killing curse into the ritual circle. It was originally a failsafe of the ritual, in which the castor wouldn’t be able to be killed during it, as to not accidentally grant their enemies the boon they themselves were seeking. It was ironic that this failsafe would allow Voldemort to do exactly that. Furthermore, it would have been set up and presumed by magic that any killing curse would be coming _from_ Harry, and not towards him. In combination, it would redirect the curse to the appropriate target, so that the ritual may complete himself.

Alas, for the Dark Lord, he had killed the original target – the sacrifice, and became the new victim in exchange. He, unlike Lily, was not willing to die for the ritual, and so his life was simply ended upon contact with the killing curse. For dark magic is about sacrifice, loss and gain. Once cannot create an individual part of soul without giving up another. To kill a victim in the creation of a horcrux, not only required the sacrifice of another’s life, but the sacrifice of another’s _soul._ And so Lily’s recently ejected soul would be drawn into the circle, but not destroyed as it otherwise would be, because the price of death was paid twice over, and two pieces of soul would be drawn towards Harry. Firstly, Lily’s – which, although she was willing to sacrifice, she was only willing to do so in protection for her son, and so her soul would be bound to him as said protection. Secondly, the piece of soul from the Dark Lord, which would have detached itself in the presence of the ritual and under the completed requirement of Voldemort’s willingness to murder. It too would be drawn towards the vessel its original owner was so intent upon during its making, the young Harry Potter.

And so, these series of events would allow for the most extraordinary outcome – for the Dark Lord to perish, and for his enemy to house both protection from him and a part of his soul. While Voldemort would later be born again of Harry’s – and thus Lily’s blood – and loosely fall under category of being her ‘son’ – allowing them both to touch – he would not house Lily’s soul. And thus, when he would cast the killing curse once more, he would not send both his horcrux and Harry Potter into the afterlife, but his horcrux and Lily’s soul, that in acting as a safeguard against Harry’s own soul, would be sacrificed once more in his stead for him to return to life and finally kill the Dark Lord.

Now all Harry needed to do was draw the ritual to make these extraordinary events come into play.  He only had to draw a simply ritual circle, invoke the gods and then live with the knowledge that he was damning his mother’s soul into years of continuous sacrifice. She would not go on to the next great adventure with her husband if he did this, and it would have been Harry who condemned her to it.

The green-eyed man took a deep, shuddering breath. It was his mother, or the wizarding world. And it was up to him which one he chose to take the fall.

It was always times like these, in great stress that he would remember Hermoine saying something or another that made him wish he had listened to her before. In this, she once called him Aristotle’s tragic hero. He remembered looking it up, and then being outraged at the thought. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is thought to be a man whose misfortune comes to him, not through fate or the change of fortune, but through an error in judgement. After losing his parents, his childhood, _Sirius_ , the entire notion that he’d done something at some point that made it all happen made him furious. As if he _deserved_ it somehow; like it was all some kind of karma.

It was ironic then, because Hermoine turned out to be correct once more. Tragic heroes were flawed individuals who commit, without evil intent, great wrongs or injuries that ultimately lead to their misfortune, only to realise, in some horrifically ironic series of instances, the true nature of events that led to this destiny. And Harry knew, like always, that he wouldn’t be proving his friend wrong.

Ignoring the sudden sting in his eyes, he crept forward, uncorking a bottle of his own blood as he went by. This would tie him, irrevocably to the events that would transpire, not only in participation, but in responsibility.

And as he put the finishing touches of the ruinic circle, using shadows to obscure its presence, Harry knew that he had irrevocably damned the soul of another for his own devices.

All for the greater good.


End file.
